White House Down
| runtime = 131 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = $150 million | gross = $205.4 million | image_size = | border = }} White House Down is a 2013 American political action thriller film directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Woods, Jason Clarke, Joey King, and Richard Jenkins. The film's screenplay, by James Vanderbilt, features an assault on the White House by a paramilitary group and the Capitol Police Officer who tries to stop them. The film was released on June 28, 2013 and grossed US$205 million worldwide. Plot President of the United States James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) generates controversy over a proposed peace treaty between the allied nations to remove military forces from the Middle East. Divorced US Capitol Police officer John Cale (Channing Tatum) is currently assigned to Speaker of the House Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins) after saving his nephew's life during a tour in Afghanistan. Cale hopes to impress his politically obsessed daughter Emily (Joey King) by getting a job interview for the Secret Service Presidential Detail, while also getting tickets for the two of them to tour the White House. However, his interviewer, Secret Service Special Agent Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a former college acquaintance of his, believes him to be unqualified due to his disrespect towards authority and a lifetime pattern of leaving things unfinished, such as his college degree or his tour of duty, and subsequently deems him ineligible for the job. Disguised as a janitor, a man detonates a bomb at the center of the US Capitol building, causing the White House to be on lockdown. Finnerty is sent to escort the Speaker to an underground command center in the Pentagon, while Vice President of the United States Alvin Hammond (Michael Murphy) is taken aboard Air Force One. At the same time, mercenaries led by Emil Stenz (Jason Clarke), having infiltrated the White House by disguising themselves as audio-visual repairmen, quickly overwhelm the Secret Service, take the tour group hostage and seize the White House. Cale manages to escape to go find his daughter, who was separated from him during the tour, during a distraction caused by one of the security staff. Retiring Head of the Presidential Detail Martin Walker (James Woods) escorts Sawyer and his detail to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Once they gain access, Walker kills his detail, revealing himself to be the real leader of the attack on the White House. He wants vengeance against Sawyer after a botched black ops mission resulted in the death of his son. Cale kills a mercenary, takes his gun and radio, and rescues Sawyer when he overhears Walker talking about his plans. Walker and Stenz bring in infamous hacker Skip Tyler (Jimmi Simpson) to hack into the defense system, but still require Sawyer to activate the nuclear football. One of the mercenaries, Carl Killick (Kevin Rankin), catches Emily recording a video of the mercenaries on her phone and takes her hostage. Cale and Sawyer contact the command structure, which uses Emily's video to discover the identities of the mercenaries, who used to work for various government agencies. Cale and Sawyer try to escape via a secret tunnel but find the exit gate rigged with explosives. They are forced into the garage and escape in the presidential limo, which is attacked by Stenz and flips into the White House pool after a chase through the grounds. After Sawyer and Cale are presumed dead in an explosion, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is invoked; Hammond is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. Cale and Sawyer are still alive and learn that Hammond ordered an aerial incursion to take back the White House, but the mercenaries shoot down the choppers. Having already learned of Emily from the video, Stenz takes her to Walker in the Oval Office. Tyler finishes hacking into NORAD and launches a missile to shoot down Air Force One from Piketon, Ohio, killing President Hammond and everyone else on board. Raphelson is sworn in as the 48th President of the United States and orders an air strike on the White House. Sawyer surrenders himself to Walker to save Emily. Walker attempts to force Sawyer to use the football to launch the nuclear missiles against the various cities in Iran; Walker blames the Iranian regime for killing his son in combat. Sawyer refuses at first, while Cale sets various rooms on fire as a diversion. Down in the tunnels, Tyler inadvertently triggers the explosives and dies when they detonate. After killing most of the remaining mercenaries and freeing the hostages, Cale confronts Stenz and blows him up with a grenade belt during a fight. Sawyer attacks Walker, who uses Sawyer's handprint to activate the football. Walker locks Iran's targets with the football when Cale enters the Oval Office by crashing a reinforced Chevrolet through the wall. When Walker reaches to launch the missiles, Cale kills him with the car's rotary cannon. Emily waves a presidential flag on the front lawn, convincing the incoming fighter planes to call off the air strike. Cale realizes that Raphelson was Walker's accomplice in orchestrating the attack, motivated to take the President's Office after killing Sawyer in exchange for giving Walker the nuclear codes. Having been tricked into confessing in the belief that Sawyer is dead and Cale has no proof, Raphelson is arrested for treason. Sawyer names Cale as his new special agent and takes him and Emily on a personal aerial tour of DC. President Sawyer receives word that the nations of Russia, Iran, France, and Israel have agreed to his Peace Deal after learning of that day's events at the White House, calling for an end to all wars. Cast * Channing Tatum as John Cale, a United States Capitol Police officer. * Jamie Foxx as James Sawyer, the President of the United States. * Maggie Gyllenhaal as Carol Finnerty, Secret Service Presidential Detail. * Jason Clarke as Emil Stenz, an ex-Delta Force and CIA operative. Leader of the mercenaries. * Richard Jenkins as Eli Raphelson, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. * Joey King as Emily Cale, the daughter of John Cale. * James Woods as Martin James Walker, Head of the Secret Service Presidential Detail. * Nicolas Wright as Donnie Donaldson, White House Tour Guide. * Jimmi Simpson as Skip Tyler, a computer hacker and the technical specialist in Stenz's group. * Michael Murphy as Alvin Hammond, the Vice President of the United States. * Rachelle Lefevre as Melanie, the former wife of John Cale and the mother of Emily Cale. * Lance Reddick as General Caulfield, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. * Matt Craven as Kellerman, Capitol Police officer. * Jake Weber as Ted Hope, Secret Service agent. * Peter Jacobson as Wallace, Vice President Chief of Staff. * Barbara Williams as Muriel Walker, Martin Walker's wife. * Kevin Rankin as Carl Killick, a right-wing militant and one of Stenz's henchmen. * Garcelle Beauvais as Alison Sawyer, First Lady of the United States. * Falk Hentschel as Motts, one of Stenz's henchmen. * Romano Orzari as Mulcahy, one of Stenz's henchmen. * Jackie Geary as Jenna, assistant to the Vice President. * Anthony Lemke as Captain Hutton, an analyst in the Pentagon. * Vincent Leclerc as Ryan Todd, Secret Service agent. * Kyle Gatehouse as Conrad Cern, a right-wing white supremacist and one of Stenz's henchmen. Production White House Down is directed by Roland Emmerich and based on a screenplay by James Vanderbilt, who is also one of the film's producers. Sony Pictures purchased Vanderbilt's spec script in March 2012 for , in what The Hollywood Reporter called "one of the biggest spec sales in quite a while". The journal said the script was similar "tonally and thematically" to the films Die Hard and Air Force One. In the following April, Sony hired Roland Emmerich as director. Emmerich began filming in July 2012 at the La Cité Du Cinéma in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Cinematographer Anna Foerster shot the film with Arri Alexa Plus digital cameras. In 2012, Sony competed with Millennium Films, who were producing Olympus Has Fallen (also about a takeover of the White House) to complete casting and to begin filming. Release White House Down was originally scheduled for a November 1, 2013 release, but was moved up to a June 28, 2013 release. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 22, 2013. Reception Critical response White House Down received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 50%, based on 191 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "White House Down benefits from the leads' chemistry, but director Roland Emmerich smothers the film with narrative clichés and choppily edited action." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score to reviews, the film has an average score of 52 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Roth Cornet of IGN gives it a 6.5/10, concluding: "White House Down is a pretty silly rehashing of previously tread action movie territory, but if you're willing to laugh along with (or even at) it, it can be a highly entertaining experience." Andrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia writes, "I am not entirely sure, whether I should be happy or sad that I laughed when someone got shot or bombed, but such is the manner of how the film is played out. Therefore, I prefer Olympus for this one." Richard Roeper, however, gave the film an F, stating that "Everyone in ''White House Down is an idiot, clinically insane, a cliché, or a vehicle for shameless exploitation." He later named it the worst film of 2013. Box office The film grossed $73.1 million in the United States and $132.3 million internationally for a total gross of $205.4 million, against a budget of $150 million. On its opening weekend in the U.S., the film disappointed and came in at 4th at the box office. It earned $24.9 million, less than March's similarly themed Olympus Has Fallen ($30.4 million opening). In its second weekend, the film made $13.4 million. In October 2013, Sony announced it lost $197 million for June, July, and August 2013, and largely blamed "the box office flop of the movie White House Down as a key reason for the weakness". See also * Transfer of Power (1999) *XXX: State of the Union (2005) * Olympus Has Fallen (2013) * London Has Fallen (2016) * Air Force One (1997) References External links * * * * * * by Jason Buchanan Category:2013 films Category:2010s action thriller films Category:American action thriller films Category:American films Category:American political thriller films Category:Columbia Pictures films Category:English-language films Category:Films about fictional Presidents of the United States Category:United States presidential succession in fiction Category:World War III speculative fiction Category:Films about terrorism Category:Films about Delta Force Category:Films directed by Roland Emmerich Category:Films produced by James Vanderbilt Category:Films scored by Harald Kloser Category:Films set in 2014 Category:Films set in Washington, D.C. Category:Films shot in Montreal Category:Films set in the White House Category:Screenplays by James Vanderbilt Category:IMAX films